Yeah, of course. I even pay for the insurance of the buyer that bought from my buyer. I am a nice guy, mmmkay?

That's not what his logic suggests. =/

Yeah it appears to be the growing trend.  There's obviously more dollars to be made ensuring more first-hand game sales than selling DLC.

Easy there killer.  I used an imperfect analogy, I didn't murder your pet gerbil (that was Galaki).

Now, let's look at your analogy of the Subway sandwich.  Subway's staff is (modestly) trained to put specific portions of food on the sandwich.  There are set numbers of slices of meat, cheese, and the like that they are required to put on.  You only get so many meatballs, not more and not less.  Essentially you know what the final product will be.  However, a game is different.  There's no functionality that you're guaranteed to have, no definitive limit on what the content must include.  The final product is what you get in the box.

That's the way it's always worked or always used to anyway.  However, new things came along such as DLC and microtransactions which force gamers and developers to reconsider what constitutes a "complete" game and what should be in the final product.  Microtransactions enrage gamers because we know the content is there.  It was available at release and was specifically chosen to be withheld.  They are deliberately not giving it to us.  By locking away those elements of the game and pricing them, they have essentially increased the price of the "complete" game.  Sneaky way to backdoor a price increase if you ask me.

DLC is a little murkier.  If the DLC is done before the game is released or shipped, then we look at it and have to ask "Why didn't you include it with the game?"  At that point, it's no different than a microtransaction in that it's content being withheld from the gamer.  If it was developed and released long after release then it's akin to an expansion pack of old.  Maybe it's cheaper and smaller, but it's something a PC gamer can relate to and that's okay.  The murky part comes in when you have DLC that is available "soon" after release.  If they held the release of the game for a week, could the content have made it in? 2 weeks? 

Obviously the cut-off is different by the person.  A company could release DLC the next day post-release and Akvod might kiss their feet and thank them.  I'd just call them bastards because my tolerance for that is less than some others.

However, what EA is doing is a little different than what Kasz and I were griping about.  What we were talking about is timed DLC but what EA is doing now isn't really about DLC or about countering used game sales.  I'm guessing it's about pushing EA's profile service.  Really, the little slip of DLC paper in the box could be sold with the copy so gamers looking to buy used can still get it that way.  The point of locking away that content from the gamer while still making it free with every purchase is more likely to be getting them to sign up to the EA profile service.  There's very few carrots that hook people quite as well as the promise of "free" stuff and with the recent release of Mass Effect 2, it's very clear to me that EA is going to be driving their service in the future.  Can't say to where but they're going for something and this is their way of getting a foot in the door to a lot of people.

so if I buy bad company 2 for 60? then I realize the game is a pile of crap and I want to resell it now I will need to lower my price by 15$ to sell it or screw the dude over?
They already cut 1/3 of the contents of games nowadays to put on dlcs and now they will cut an other 1/3 if you buy used, man that's some real bullcrap

No, either way they're probably checking the code you put in versus what one in their system has permissions to grant.  Granting more DLC would likely be as simple as giving that code (or set of codes) more permissions.  The only real argument you could make for reasoning that they would need to tie to the profile is to prevent 50,000 people from using the same code which, in theory, could still happen but it would just be more obvious.

That's a good point.  I'm not sure how (if at all) the PSN ties to what EA is doing.  I still look at things from a PC gamer perspective.

Eh, Nintendo seems to be doing well in this department. Hell, I just sold Wii Sports, a 3 year old game bundled in every Wii in the west, for $20 2 weeks ago. Kinda shocking.

As for people acting as if second hand customers are doing nothing for EA, I disagree. People always seem to overlook this. The used game sales does have an effect on new games. Buying a copy depletes the used games supply, which effects the demand (the price).

The funny thing is, the people that really get screwed over for this are the new game buyers that end up selling the game. Since the worth goes down if they used their DLC code, people going for the used copies will take this into account and pay less for it.
(I guess this is assuming you're not buying from some crappy place like Gamestop)

Great i never buy used anyways.

<-- Blue Slime, not a gerbil.